


there is gold across the river

by evewithanapple



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)
Genre: F/M, Mermaids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-23
Updated: 2011-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-19 17:36:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She can hear their song as she lies in her man-fashioned coffin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there is gold across the river

Her name is whispered beneath the waves where her sisters frolic, and sung on the beaches where they lie in the sun and comb their sea-soaked hair. It is chanted, low and mournful when she is taken, and her sisters rise above the whitecaps and cry for her. She can hear their song as she lies in her man-fashioned coffin.

When the men capture her, their nets rubbing raw red wounds into her tender flesh and tepid water choking in her gills and leaving her without air, it is one of them who saves her. A sailor whose feeble human lungs could not withstand the depths she and her sisters plumbed so easily without collapsing and withering like plants left too long in the sun without water to give them life. One like her own progenitor, who her mother had tried and failed to give life to, tearing gills into the sides of his neck and howling her sorrow to the sky when her attempts had failed. One who she and her sisters had sometime spied upon while bathing on the rocks; when they saw white billows off in the distance, they knew that men were approaching.

“They fear us.” her eldest sister had said. “They fear our song.”

“Why is it so?” she had asked; but her sisters had merely shaken their heads at her childish question. Men feared their kind; their kind avoided men. So it had always been.

But there were some who were worthy of their notice, she was told. “Remember, my daughter,” said her mother, as she was rocked to sleep in her cradle of seashells, “seek out the one whose voice sings a true song. You will find your home in him.”

Her home is in the sea, and she will never take true solace where her skin is dry and cracks for want of water and she cannot hear her sisters’ songs. So she tells her mother; so she thinks until one night when she hears a coarse tune ringing out over the waters, and she and her sisters swim out to investigate. The eldest scoffs at their pathetic attempts; they can all hear the trap in their voices, and a sport will be made of those who dared try and capture a mermaid. But something else has caught her attention; the one voice among them who is not dark with deception and greed, but rather tired and afraid, so afraid. Trapped.

She sees him when she surfaces, and is mesmerized by the beauty of his face. She has never seen a man who looks thus before; all those who have crossed her path have been coarse, weather-beaten, pocked with illness and scars. No fit bridegroom for a daughter of the sea. But this one is smooth of face and gentle of voice, and so she lingers for a moment longer to pull him from the jaws of the fire his kinsmen created.

When the net closes around her, she cries out in anguish, knowing what is done to her kind by men greedy for their sorrow and their beauty. They close her up in a little space where her tail cramps and the breath chokes in her throat, and still she hears the cries of her sisters. The kind-voices man saves her then, and she is grateful, though she has no voice with which to tell him, her lungs still faint from the lack of air. Then, when the coffin breaks and she is spilled out on land, her limbs as weak as seaweed, unable to move more than a step, it is he who takes her into his arms and carried her on.

( _“I didn’t ask for help.”_

 _“But you need it.”_

She thinks perhaps her mother may have been right.)

As his breath slows and his last sigh is delivered into her mouth, she knows what she must do. He saved her once. She must save him in return. Quickly, she takes him into her arms and dives below the water, kicking her tail not with the newfound joy of freedom, but with purpose. There is no time to lose.

She takes him to her sisters, who sit amidst their palace of coral, singing a song of rejoicing for their lost sister’s return. When she places her love before them, her eldest sister’s eyes narrow, but her mother only looks on in sorrow. She knows what is in her daughter’s heart.

“You must save him.” she says.

Her sisters’ nostrils flare. “Save your kidnapper?”

“Save the one who saved me.” Quickly, she explains what transpired on land; how the man she brings before them was the one who had cut her loose from her bonds and returned to set her free. Her sisters still look doubtful, but her mother leaves the throne to swim to her daughter’s side.

“I can heal him,” she says gently, “but he will never live beneath these waves. You know this. If you wish him to live, you must release him.”

Her heart rises up in her throat, but she knows what she must do. “Then I will rise to the surface with him.”

Her sisters cry out in protest, but her mother merely nods sadly. “As I knew you would. Your path will not be easy, child. You are certain?”

She nods.

With tears in her eyes, her mother reaches out to place her hands over Philip’s wound. She throws her head back and begins another song; one that echoes against the walls of their castle and brings her sisters to her side, all joining their voices with hers’.  Their song rises above the waves to their air above, and miles away, sailors turn their heads in wonderment as the siren’s song calls Philip home.

As they sing, they rise, and his eyes open just as they break the surface of the water. Her sisters circle them, still singing; but now it is a song of loss, of mourning for their lost sister. She takes Philip in her arms again and glances once more at her mother and sisters. She knows she will never see them again.

If she lingers, she knows she will linger forever, so instead she strikes out for land. The man in her arms is still groggy, but he manages a few feeble kicks, and he is able to pull himself up by the time they reach the shore. She drags herself up onto the sand with her elbows, then lies still, drawing air into her lungs. It is still a strange feeling, and somewhat painful.

When she turns to look, Philip is staring at her, his cross still clutched in his hand. He looks as though his eyes are cast on a goddess; some pure and holy form that he has never seen before.

She has made the right choice.

"We should strike out for land." he says awkwardly, breaking his gaze away from her. She nods. Slowly, painfully, she pulls herself to her feet. her legs still cramped from disuse and the unfamiliarity of walking. He stretches out a hand to help her as she passes him, but she shakes her head. She must learn to walk in this world herself.

He takes the oars of the boat, after placing his shirt around her shoulders once more- a custom, it seems, among her new people- and they are set adrift on the ocean. She sits at the prow, watching the island where she had wept for her captors shrink in the distance. Philip lays one oar awkwardly across his lap. "Syrena-"

She shakes her head gently. "That is not my name."

Confusion creases his brow. "What is?"

Her eyes remain fixed on the island, the name her sisters had given her sitting on her lips. "I will tell you when we reach land."

He nods, and takes the oars again, setting them to the water with a grunt. She can hear the waves lapping against the side of their boat, beating in time with the laments of her sisters as they grow fainter in the distance.


End file.
